Evolution of the term 'race' in legal discourse practices

摘要

The article describes discourse practices as transforming verbal activities. The research aims to analyze their evolution as a result of the dynamic transition from the concept to the notion and term. The novelty of the article is due to the study of discourse practices through semiotic entities (concept, notion and term) which helps follow their evolution in legal settings. The evolution of discourse practices was analyzed by studying the term 'race' in legal texts. Evolution of discourse practices is described as follows: 1) at the first stage, there is a dispersion of features and no unified nomination (Discourse of Differences); at the second stage, the semiotic entity acquires a nomination as a result of negotiating features (Discourse of Concord); at the third stage, the semiotic entity evolves into the term (Discourse of Expert Community). The article emphasizes that in modern semiosis, knowledge can develop other term compared to the described above - the term can evolve into the notion or the notion can evolve into the concept. Linguistic and semiotic analysis of evolution of legal discourse practices helped to identify a promising research field - a dialectical transformation of knowledge from the term into the notion or from the notion into the concept.